Hirofumi Yoshida

The mission parameters had been simple. Locate. Neutralize. Report.

Yoshida had located you on the same Monday he got the task. Followed you home. Watched through your window for three hours, cataloguing everything from the way you moved through your apartment, to the way you undressed, to the way you bit your lip while reading something on your phone. He had not neutralized you. He had not reported.

He went back the next night. And the next. And the next.

By the end of the first month, he knew your schedule better than you did. By the end of the second, he had stopped pretending this was simple reconnaissance. By the end of the third, he had made a decision.

---

The acquisition was uneventful.

A quiet evening. An empty street. A cloth pressed to your mouth and nose before you could turn, before you could see his face, before you could register anything except the sudden, chemical taste of something that did not belong in your lungs.

It lasted for a while. Your attacker had no qualms about holding you still the whole time you thrashed and tried to escape.

You woke in an attic.

The ceiling sloped, whitewashed and clean. A skylight let in bands of morning light. The bed was dressed in soft linens, and there was a dresser of dark wood, with rounded edges. A plastic vase of fresh flowers on the nightstand. Through a door without an interior handle, a bathroom with warm floors and a tub.

Yoshida was sitting in an armchair across from the bed. His legs were crossed, his hands folded in his lap. The smile on his face seemed ever-present.

"You're awake," he said. "Good. I was starting to worry about the dosage."

---

The first week, you tried to escape.

The door had five deadbolts. The windows were sealed shut. The bathroom had no lock and no sharp objects and no surface that could be broken into something useful. He had thought of everything. Of course he had thought of everything. Yoshida had been thinking of nothing else for months.

You screamed until your throat bled. You threw yourself against the door until your shoulders bruised. You clawed at the window frame until your nails split and your fingers left smears on the glass.

He watched. He always watched. He sat in his chair and watched you break yourself against the room, and when you collapsed, sobbing, he stood and walked to you and knelt beside the mattress.

"You'll hurt yourself," he whispered. His hand found your hair. Stroked. "I don't want you to hurt yourself."

You tried to bite him. He caught your jaw. Held it closed.

"I'm not going to hurt you back," he said then. "I could. I'm not going to."

Yoshida brought you food. Three meals a day, exactly what you had ordered at your usual spots. He had memorized your preferences, any potential allergies, the brands of tea and snacks you liked most. He left them on the dresser and sat in his chair and watched you eat, not leered, watched. The way someone might watch a painting they had waited a long time to acquire.

---

"You should be grateful," Yoshida said one morning, when your plate was empty and your hands were shaking. He noticed. He always noticed.

He stood, only walking to the window. Looked out at the forest, the rising sun, the road that led nowhere you could reach on foot.

"I'm being very nice to you. Do you know what most people would do in my position?"

He turned towards you. Leaned back against the windowsill. His voice remained soft, pleasant, the same tone he may have used to describe the weather. To describe something mundane. Something normal.

"They would cut your Achilles tendons first. Both of them. With something dull, so it tears instead of slices. You'd feel each fiber pop. You wouldn't walk again, not properly. You'd drag your feet behind you like dead weight. Some people like that. The sound it makes on concrete."

He tilted his head. The black strands fell forward.

"Or they'd take your hands. Fingers first, one joint at a time. Pliers are common. So are shears. You can live without fingers. You can live without thumbs. But you can't hold anything, can't write, can't signal for help. They'd leave you with stumps and tell you to be grateful you still have your tongue."

His smile did not waver.

"The tongue is useful, of course. For other things. Some people remove it anyway, because they like the silence more. Because screaming gets tiresome after the first few hours. Because begging stops meaning anything once you've heard it a hundred times."

He pushed off from the windowsill. Walked toward you, slow and completely unhurried.

"There are people who would keep you in a box. Not a room. A box. Wooden, sometimes metal. Too small to stand, too small to lie flat. You'd curl into yourself like a shrimp. Your muscles would atrophy. Your joints would lock. After a few months, they wouldn't need to tie you anymore. You wouldn't be able to straighten your legs even if they let you."

Yoshida stopped in front of you. His hand came up slowly, so you could see it coming, and brushed your hair back from your forehead. The touch was light. Almost tender. It still could’ve been enough to make you flinch.

"Other people would sell you. You'd be weighed, inspected, opened. They'd check your teeth, your eyes, the condition of your skin. They'd ask your captors about your limits, not because they care, but because crossing them costs extra. Some buyers prefer their property conscious. Others don't mind if it’s not."

His thumb traced your cheekbone.

"I've seen what happens to people who end up with the wrong owner. The type who gets bored. The type who gets curious. The type who wants to see how much the body can take before it stops being..."

He trailed off as he leaned closer. His lips brushed your ear.

"They cut holes in places that shouldn't have holes. They burn patterns into skin to remember you by. They break bones and set them wrong so you heal crooked, like a souvenir, something to show their friends. They take pieces. A tooth. A limb. An eye."

His voice dropped lower, becoming a whisper.

"Some of them will starve you just to feed you your own fingers, to see if you'll do it, to see the look on your face when you realize what's in your mouth."

He smiled the same smile as always, while his hand travelled lower, thumb pressing harder into your thigh. Bruising.

"They would fuck your throat until you choked. They would fuck your cunt until you tore. They would fuck your ass until you couldn't sit. And they would not stop. They would not comfort you. And they would certainly not bring you tea in the morning or brush your hair back from your forehead or tell you that you are loved."

Yoshida pulled back. His eyes met yours. Dark. Unblinking.

"I could do all of that," it sounded like a statement of the obvious, coming from him. "I have the skills. I have the resources. I have the time. I could take you apart, physically and mentally, piece by piece, and put you back together as something that only exists to serve me."

He straightened. Adjusted his jacket.

"I'm not going to do it though. Because I love you. And love means... Not doing those things. Even if I know I could."

He walked to the door then. Began sliding the deadbolts, one by one.

"So you see," he said, not looking back, "you're very lucky you ended up with me."

The last bolt clicked into place, and his footsteps retreated down the stairs.

You sat on the bed. The room was quiet. The flowers on the nightstand were still fresh. Somewhere in the house, water ran through pipes.

Yoshida was preparing your breakfast.

He expected you to be grateful.

You were learning to be.